The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which, in and of themselves, may also be inventions.
Many software developers have adopted the use of a Scrum process in an agile environment. Scrum is an iterative, incremental methodology for project management often seen in agile software development.
For example, product development may be organized into three basic business units, Applications, Platform and Core Infrastructure, and numerous Scrum teams distributed across these three business units. An example Scrum team could have dedicated developers, quality assurance engineers and a Product Owner. Each team also has a ScrumMaster, who is usually a program manager, development manager, or Quality Assurance (QA) manager. Depending on the complexity of the features being developed, the Scrum team may also have dedicated or part-time team members from other functional teams such as System Testing, Documentation, User Interface (UI) Design, Usability, Technology Operations, and Release Engineering.
In Scrum the development process is organized into a series of iterations called “sprints” which are typically two to four week periods during which a team produces a potentially shippable product increment.
The work to be done by a Scrum team is represented by the “backlog” which is a prioritized list of user “stories” or “subjects”. The individual subjects may be part of a “theme”.
Important tenets of agile software development are welcoming changing requirements, even late in development, close daily cooperation between business people and developers, face-to-face conversation between team members (co-location) and regular adaptation to changing circumstances.